Promoting Community Learning in the Classroom
Note: This was originally written on December 20, 2022 and posted here on my personal website.
In my redesigned Introductory Biology course this semester, I included something new in the final course grade: Community Learning Contributions. In this post, I reflect on the various positive impacts of this decision.
Why I decided to include Community Learning Contributions in the course grade
When I redesigned my Introductory Biology course, I wanted to include a course component that rewarded students for contributing to our learning community. I was inspired by this Tweet (which is no longer publicly available, but I have a screenshot!).
Instead of “Colleague Points”, I called mine “Community Learning Contributions.” I debated whether to include Community Learning Contributions in the final course grade - I’m not a fan of including behavior in the grade: I think a student’s grade should reflect what they have learned, not how well they jumped through hoops.
However, I really liked the idea of incentivizing students doing things to contribute to each other’s learning. There are ways to incentivize behavior in the classroom that don’t require including it in the grade - you can use tokens (which I use to create artificial scarcity around turning in work late) or you can create a non-grade reward system like a class-wide party, food-related treats, or a grade-free “leader board.” I considered having an “Oscar’s party” at the end of the semester where students could up-vote each other for being supportive or helpful community members — but since it could easily turn into a popularity contest, I decided against it.
Since I wanted to encourage everyone to contribute to our learning community, I ultimately decided to include Community Learning Contributions as 5% of the final course grade (in all of my grading schemes). Here’s how I implemented it:
At the beginning of the semester, students collectively created a list of things that would count as “Community Learning Contributions.”
In the middle of the semester, I checked in with students: What are you doing to contribute to our learning community? We revisited and updated our Community Learning Contributions document.
At the end of the semester, students completed a Reflection in which they described and documented what they did to contribute to our learning community. I used this to determine their Learning Community Contributions grade.
How it went
I noticed three ways my class felt different this semester because I implemented Community Learning Contributions:
Students posted their notes to our LMS
At the beginning of each class period, I asked “Who will post today’s notes?” Each day, 2 volunteers posted their class notes to our Learning Management System. In their end-of-semester Reflections, many students reported how helpful this was, both because they regularly viewed other students’ notes (for days they missed class, or to review topics in preparation for an assessment), and because when they posted their own notes, they took better notes!
Posting their own notes as an explicit “Community Learning Contribution” was an easy way for socially-anxious or introverted students to contribute to the learning community. Because it was included in the grade, students were motivated to do it! I don’t think I would have had as many different students posting their notes if it wasn’t included in the course grade.
Discord
In the middle of the semester, after we checked in about Community Learning Contributions, one of my students set up a Discord server for the class and sent around a sheet of paper during lecture to collect email addresses. Most of the students in the course joined the Discord and - apparently - it was very active! In a previous semester I set up a Slack channel and tried to encourage students to use it, but it completely fell flat. This semester, since the Discord server was student-driven (and I wasn’t on it), they used it extensively - which I know only because they told me about it in their end-of-semester Reflections!
On their Discord server, one student sent reminders about upcoming due dates. Some students had evening voice calls where they studied together. Students asked and answered each other’s questions. And at the end of the semester when I had one-on-one grading conferences for lab (which I grade “collaboratively”), one student asked about Gene Guns; she was so excited about it that she posted to Discord and most of the students I met with after her asked me about Gene Guns too!
I am thrilled by how active and successful the Discord server ended up being for my students - and I don’t think it would have happened if I had not incentivized “Learning Community Contributions” by including it in the grade.
Students Had a Tight-Knit Community
Most of the students in my 40-person class did not know each other at the beginning of the semester; by the end of the semester, it was obvious that they had a tight-knit community. They brought snacks for each other, spent time with each other, and helped each other inside and outside of class.
Full disclosure, I don’t think this was just because I included “Learning Community Contributions” in the final course grade. I assigned students to teams in lecture and lab, which I switched half-way through the semester; by the end of the semester, each student had been in four different groups of 4 students each. In both lecture and lab, students worked closely together to answer questions and solve problems. (Note that I never assigned graded group projects, because labor imbalances can promote resentment, which doesn’t help build community!)
The structure of the course encouraged community-building, but by including “Community Learning Contributions” in the grade, I also set an explicit expectation of collaboration rather than competition. It was obvious that the community my students’ built was good for them, both academically and socially.
What I’ll Do Differently Next Time
Because this was my first time incorporating Learning Community Contributions in the course grade, I didn’t know how I would “grade” it until I wrote the Reflection template at the end of the semester. In the Reflection, I asked students to identify things they did to help others, things other people did that helped them, and to provide evidence that they did the things they said they did.
Asking for evidence ended up being a challenge, especially since I hadn’t let them know in advance that I needed them to document their evidence of contributing to community learning. It was easy to provide evidence if they posted their notes to our LMS or if they could provide a screenshot of a text thread, but some students had no evidence of things that obviously count as contributing to the learning community: one student helped another student locate the food bank on campus (that student later dropped the class, so they couldn’t vouch for them); other students used Snapchat to text with each other about the class, but Snapchat deletes messages after 24 hours.
I ended up being pretty relaxed with the grading. In the Reflection, I asked students to assign themselves a grade (out of 5) based on explicit expectations of what a 3, 4, or 5-point grade entails - almost all students got full credit for this assignment, and those who didn’t get full credit got 4/5 simply because they admitted to doing very little to contribute to the learning community.
In the future, I will:
make grading expectations more explicit from the beginning of the semester, including the requirement to provide evidence for at least some of the ways they contributed to the learning community. Ideally, students will have a copy of the end-of-semester Reflection at the beginning of the semester, so they know what to expect.
reduce Learning Community Contributions to 3% (instead of 5%) of the final course grade, so I can grade on a 0-3 point scale instead of 0-5. I think this will still be enough of an incentive to promote collaborative behavior in the class.
I definitely think including Learning Community Contributions helped my students learn and be successful in the course, and I will be incorporating it into all of my future classes.